5 Thoughts on the Container Industry

It's not an exaggeration to say that containers are the hottest trend in IT. KubeCon only confirmed that perception.

By Tom Fenton

12/21/2016

The annual Kubernetes conference, KubeCon, which was hosted by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), was held in downtown Seattle on Nov. 8 and 9. Leaders and users of Kubernetes, Docker and cloud-native architecture technology gathered at this event to discuss the current state and the future of these technologies.

KubeCon is a chance for those who are currently using or interested in using these technologies to get together with the supplying vendors. I was able to attend KubeCon this year and thought I'd share my thoughts on the event. I won't be going over technology or announcements made at the event, as I will cover those in other articles; instead, I'll be sharing my five observations and thoughts that stuck out to me most.

TAKE 1
There is huge amount of interest in containers. This year's KubeCon was double the size of last year, and sold out months in advance. They're predicting continued growth of the convention, and believe that KubeCon 2017 will be three times as large as this year's. This is proof that people are interested in and excited about container technology, and are eager to learn more.

TAKE2
The container community is vibrant. Every week there are exciting developments in the container world, including new products and techniques. At KubeCon, some pretty exciting announcements were made, and people were busy chatting about how they're using the technology and about the tools that help them use it most efficiently.

TAKE3
There are knowledgeable constituents. KubeCon was pretty much a geek-fest. This was definitely not an event for people looking to make the business case for container technology. The attendees were the folks that work and live it every day.

TAKE4
Industry support is tremendous. Cisco, Google, Red Hat, Box and other companies all sent executives to speak at the event. Additionally, VMware, Intel, Microsoft, Rancher, Huawei, CoreOS and many more big name companies were sponsors of the event. One thing's for sure: You don't get that kind of commitment from such a range of companies unless they see genuine value and potential in a technology.

TAKE 5
Container people are nice people. Everyone I interacted with at the conference -- presenters, vendors and attendees -- were great. They tolerated my naivety of the technology, and loved -- I mean really, really loved -- chatting about the technology and what they were working on, as well as sharing stories about how they're using it. Maybe because it's a still a relatively small conference or such a new technology, or maybe because it was a rare sunny day in Seattle, people seemed really happy at KubeCon.

About the Author

Tom Fenton works in VMware's Education department as a Senior Course Developer. He has a wealth of hands-on IT experience gained over the past 20 years in a variety of technologies, with the past 10 years focused on virtualization and storage. Before re-joining VMware, Tom was a Senior Validation Engineer with The Taneja Group, were he headed their Validation Service Lab and was instrumental in starting up its vSphere Virtual Volumes practice. He's on Twitter @vDoppler.